


In an Instant

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Southland
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-18
Updated: 2010-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-06 10:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-"Unknown Trouble."  Ben realizes something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In an Instant

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [В одно мгновение](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6281500) by [Eithline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eithline/pseuds/Eithline)



> Thanks to Iulia for beta and encouragement!

Ben mostly likes people. He knows that as far as Cooper's concerned that's right up there with wanting to help people and wanting to _buy the fucking world a Coke_, which Cooper accused him of on Friday. That's okay. Ben mostly likes people, but he doesn't like Cooper.

Most people aren't like Cooper, after all. Or maybe they are, but Ben doesn't have to deal with most people professionally for eighteen hours at a time. He thinks, fleetingly, that he's never spent eighteen straight hours with his dad.

That's not a fair comparison, though. Cooper's not anything like Ben's dad, even if the stupid Stockholm glimmer of pride he got when he finally read his day book wasn't too much unlike the way he felt as a kid, when he managed to grab his dad's attention for long enough to get some cheap expression of approval.

Cooper's not a shallow, self-obsessed asshole like his dad. Cooper's quite possibly fucking _nuts_, and he's--he's _mean_, in exactly the pointless, juvenile way the word evokes. Not to everybody--he can be downright gentle with people who need it, and he's good to Chickie--but he's mean to Ben.

So okay, so it's probably about toughening him up or something, breaking him down to build him up. Ben's doing his best not to take it personally, like Chickie said, but still. He doesn't like the guy.

So they're in the car--they are always in the car, Ben's only been on the job six days and he already has _dreams_ about being in the car. Even in his dreams he never gets to drive. They're in the car, and Cooper is ragging Ben about his shoes. His fucking _shoes_.

They're shoes. They're black. They're comfortable. He has to wear them for eighteen hours at a time. Yeah, they were kind of expensive, but fuck, Cooper's not exactly wearing Payless specials over there, either. Cooper's been on the force a long while, he makes a hell of a lot more money than Ben does and has for a long time. It's not even like the guy actually has a chip on his shoulder--he's just picked out Ben's parents having money as the thing he is going to fixate on. Good for him, it's brilliant, Ben has never heard any of this before.

It has been three solid minutes, and Cooper is still going on about Ben's shoes, and if this were college, if this were the academy, if Cooper were anyone else, anywhere else, this is about the point Ben would say _fuck it_ to being an enlightened human being and point out that, seriously, isn't this much shoe-obsession a little gay?

He actually opens his mouth--anything to end this bullshit, even Cooper has to be bored with it, it has to just be auto-pilot--and then something occurs to him.

He's not sure how he never noticed before this. He remembers his instructors at the Academy talking about listening to what people don't say, about how hard and how important it is.

Ben has been on the job for six days, and Cooper has spent every one of those days giving him shit for being rich, spoiled, over-educated, and generally not from around here.

Not once has Cooper called him a fag. Not once.

Ben frowns out the window, thinking fast. Dewey has, of course, but only a few times--Jesus, only when Cooper wasn't around. Chickie never, but then Chickie wouldn't.

God, the guys in his class at the Academy called him variations on that constantly, right up until he smoked everyone but Lindsey and Kara on the gun range, and then it was mostly cracks about Charlie's Angels. But Cooper hasn't said it _once_. Called him a girl, yeah. Called him gay, never.

Ben can think of exactly one reason for it, and it's not that Cooper is too much a citizen of the twenty-first century to try to insult people on the basis of a perfectly normal sexual preference. Fucking Christ, _Cooper is gay_.

Cooper is gay and it's a secret. That's built right into the silence around it: Cooper's silence, even Dewey's silence. Chickie's less-obvious silence--Ben asked her what Cooper's problem was and she said there were a lot of theories about that. Hinting. Talking around it. No one confronts it, not Cooper, not people close to him.

Cooper's a generation older than Ben. This is Stonewall and AIDS stuff, not _Heather Has Two Mommies_; anyway, institutions like the police and the military always lag behind. Ben's _not_ from around here, not in that sense. Cooper didn’t go to high school and college with guys who dated guys. Cooper went into the Army.

Ben can't even imagine being forty years old with this kind of silence at the middle of your life. He can't imagine what it would do to him. Maybe it would make him a little fucking crazy. Maybe it'd make him mean to a kid who'd had the chance to take an LGBT Studies class and do enough drunken extracurriculars to determine he's a four-and-a-half beer queer.

A few years ago, in the middle of dealing with one of his mom's breakdowns, pissed off because he was just a college kid and shouldn't have to handle this kind of shit, Ben realized that should doesn't matter. She's his mom, she's messed up and breakable, and he's less messed up and less breakable, so he has to be the responsible one. It was a strange feeling--actually it was fucking horrible--to suddenly feel protective of someone who always protected him. Always did her best to protect him, anyway.

He feels a little like that now: for all he's known Cooper less than a week, for all he hasn't _liked_ Cooper, the guy's seemed indestructible, infallible give or take being sort of crazy. But now Ben knows his secret, and even if it's a secret Ben wouldn't keep for himself, he's got to keep it for Cooper. He's a little bit responsible for Cooper now. It's kind of horrible, but there's no going back from it.

Cooper smacks his arm, and Ben jerks sideways as Cooper says, "You with us, spacecakes?"

Ben stares at him for a second, thinks _Jesus, shut the fuck up_ exactly as he has about a thousand times already this week, and then busts out laughing.

Gay or not, Cooper is Cooper, and if Ben's enough of a sucker to feel bad for him....

Cooper's smiling a little. "You wanna share the joke, kid?"

Ben manages to muffle it down to a smile, shaking his head and looking away. "Just realized you're right."

When Ben steals a sideways look, Cooper's got a smug little smile. He doesn't bother asking what he's right about, but he doesn't say anything else, either. Ben's going to have that song about buying the world a Coke in his head for the rest of the watch. It probably serves him right.


End file.
